


If You're Going Through Hell.

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, canon compatible
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-08 20:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11654448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: Three oneshots, exploring the theme of "Hell is relative" and the strengths & survival of each of the Bus Kids.Part 1 - Jemma - A Planet Called Death.Part 2 - Fitz - A Man Called Alistair.





	1. A Planet Called Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agentcalliope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentcalliope/gifts).



Jemma took a deep breath. 

Bathed in the dreamy blue of eternal night, a rugged landscape opened up before her, as far as the eye could see. Already, she could smell it. She could feel the relentless sand in the air against her skin. She could taste despair. 

If she’d had a few more seconds, perhaps she would have realised that in fact, her body still stood motionless on the metal floor of the space station. She may have become aware of the fact that her team still stood around her. She may have found the will to act. To fight back. To stab her captors in the eyes with her own fingers if that’s what it took rather than go back there. 

As it was though, firm hands pushed her numb body forward. Stiffly, Jemma staggered under their direction until she really was standing in the dirt of another world. It was cold. Untouched by sunlight. Recognition – cold, sharp reality - tore through her slumber at last. 

Too late.

“No!” Jemma cried, as the portal shut behind them. Now the endless blue was all around. 

She was standing in a nightmare. 

\--- 

As protocol dictated, the team set up camp shortly after the portal had left them abandoned. They did not have much in the way of rations, and even less instructions for their mission on this planet, so they broke up protein bars into thirds and chewed on their miserable lots, thinking.

“At least our benevolent overlords have given us something to think about other than – that place,“ Piper muttered. 

“Benevolent?” Elena retorted, screwing up her face. “They’re not – Oh. You were being sarcastic. Sorry.”

She returned her eyes to the centre of the circle, wishing there was a fire to help her send her negative thoughts to the sky. They couldn’t make one unless they found something to burn, though, and from what she could see, there was nothing. So, her mood was pricklier than usual. Piper shrugged it off. None of them were feeling particularly benevolent at the moment anyway. 

“Ugh,” Daisy groaned, rolling her eyes as she propped herself up on straight arms and threw her head back. Her voice grated with the frustration all of them were feeling. “Where are we _going?_ Why are we _here?”_

“It’s torture,” Fitz murmured; not the exaggerated lament of his typical grumpy self, but the pointed insight of a darkened soul who felt he was being brutally honest. Daisy bit her lip for a moment, but with a considerable amount of effort, rolled her eyes. 

“Don’t be stupid,” she scolded, if nothing else, to needle a rise out of him. He’d been sullen and brooding all day and it wasn’t going to end well. But Fitz was unfazed. 

“Think about it,” he insisted. “If they have the technology to send us here, they must have some kind of probe that could find whatever it is they’re looking for. Instead, they send us. With a box of bloody muesli bars and enough water for a short hike. No deadlines, no known goal, and no rendezvous point. So, either they’re testing us - seeing how resourceful we are - or they don’t care, and they’re just going to wait until we all go crazy and eat each other.”

He crossed his arms, feeling the chill inside his soul more so than on the surface of his skin, despite the endless night. 

“The planet’s called 'Maveth', Daisy," he finished. "Death. What did you expect?” 

Daisy swallowed hard. 

“Secret organisations just love their damn power trips, huh?” 

She tried for a blasé snort, but it was hard to manage whilst sitting on the surface of a planet called Death. Even harder, when the person she sought to back up her attempted humour, was inadvertently the one who’d be least willing to joke about this hellhole. Daisy’s smile faded and she hung her head. At least she could hope Jemma missed that: after walking in a near-catatonic daze for most of the day, she had curled up without eating and, apparently, had fallen asleep.

Apparently.

Jemma moved her shoulders a little, slowly. Her heart pounded in her chest; it was the only thing she could hear once Daisy had stopped talking. She clenched her protein bar so tightly to her chest that even the packet didn’t dare crinkle, and she was glad for her thick jacket, disguising the true shape of the tension in her shoulders. Let them think she was asleep. Perhaps then they would stop looking her over with such painful sympathy. 

She felt Fitz’s gaze cast over her, and though they could not see each other’s faces, Jemma squeezed her eyes shut. Her body felt like it was on fire: nothing but searing pain. Nothing but suffering, and the love and the yearning she felt was only making it worse. It was exhausting. Caring. Loving. Wanting. Wanting him, wanting to be alone, wanting an end to their suffering that she could never bring. It was exhausting, knowing that even if they escaped to that little cottage in Perthshire after all this, the cloudy days would still make her want to scream. There seemed to be no way out of this pain. Certainly there was nothing she could do about it. Even if she really were a trained medical professional, she could not bring back the friends they had lost over again. She could not heal the fact that her best friend had been hunted down and beaten half-dead and returned victorious to a world where she was once again a prisoner. She could not soothe Fitz – Fitz, who was suffering perhaps more deeply than he ever had, and struggling as much as ever to articulate it. And that was before she even got started on her own wounds.

Like this place. 

Part of Jemma wondered – maybe even hoped – that they had not escaped the Framework yet after all. That, maybe, they had ascended to a second level. One designed specifically to torture her. Perhaps the first was Fitz’s nightmare; turning him into everything he hated, and doing so with the knowledge that he would remember the whole thing after the fact. And now, this was her hell. Endless, bland, scraping by… and here, of all places. Of course, it was here. Where else would any good mind game set her scene? What’s worse was, all her friends were here too. Suffering alongside her, in a place she’d once thought she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. 

(And that was saying something). 

Her stomach grumbled. Jemma took a deep breath. The protein bar, in all its berry-and-Greek-yoghurt flavoured goodness, was still clenched so tightly between her fingers that it was well on its way to becoming a diamond, but she couldn’t bring herself to take a bite. She remembered well the taste of that hideous monster plant, and she wasn’t ready to taste it again any time soon. If that meant waiting until her stomach was crawling its way out of her body before so much as sniffing at her lifeline, she was prepared to wait. 

So for the first time in a long time, Jemma went to sleep hungry.

\--- 

She woke up on an alien planet, with alien air in her lungs. She woke with a start, and her weight was wrong and the sounds around her were foreign and her eyes were blinded by blue and darkness and stars. How could there still be stars? There had been stars for so long. 

Her hand tightened around her makeshift blade, and a crinkling sound made her jump. She looked down. It was not a knife at all but something soft and useless and strange. She’d crushed it in her hands while she’d slept. 

The wind was picking up. Something moved in the dark.

 _It’s here. It’s after me._  

Jemma’s breath began to shallow. She had no weapons, no memory of why she was here. How long had she been here? 

A hand reached for her in the darkness and she screamed. The shadowed face of the LMD, his eyes hollow, reached for her. 

“Jemma, I’m not going to hurt you.” 

_“Stay away from me!”_

She scrambled backward, her fingers flailing in the dirt for something to grasp. She found fire, and grabbed it, and threw. Hot coals seared her skin, but the monster covered its face and she had time to run. 

So she did.

Jemma ran flat-out, single-minded. She careened across the sand, her feet barely stumbling through this horrifically familiar landscape. Sand, and rocks, and fungus, her nimble legs pushed past them all. Gravity was heavier here, so she pushed harder. She pushed until she was gasping and dripping with sweat, and miles from where she’d started. 

Miles and miles from where she’d started.

And it was here that she started to remember. The fire: she’d never had one here before, not above ground. The movement in the dark was not a shadow hunting her, but one of her friends. One of her team that she’d left behind. And the face - the monstrous face – it hadn’t been a monster at all, but Fitz. Just Fitz, just trying to help her.

The air began to choke her. Hyperventilating. Jemma turned on the spot, looking for help, for someone to watch her and make sure she came out of it, but there was no one. They were miles away. She was fit, and after she’d thrown God-knows-what in Fitz’s eyes she reckoned they’d given her space to breathe. Otherwise at least one of them would be here by now.

Where was here? Jemma turned and turned, rocking on her feet as she went, pulling her breathing back under control gradually as she refocused her mind. Somewhere, in her memory, she knew these hills. She knew these constellations. If she could just stop clouding them over each other and think for a minute, she would be able to figure it out. If she could just set herself this task, solve this problem, one at a time, she could make it out alive. 

She was still staring at the stars when, a few minutes later, laboured footsteps came into her hearing range. Heavy breathing.

“Daisy?” 

(A sigh of relief. The stars would still not reveal themselves to her and even if they did, she couldn’t remember where she’d come from. Plus, she was glad enough to see a friendly face at all. She could have kissed the ground of this godforsaken place once Daisy had walked on it.) 

Puffing, Daisy slowed and smiled. 

“Damn, Jemma, you’re really keeping it tight,” she praised, bending over to catch her breath. “Oh, Jesus, that’s a run.” 

“How far did I make it?” 

“’bout three miles,” Daisy replied. “Although it’s hard to tell. I feel like I’ve been running through water.” 

“It’s the gravity,” Jemma explained. 

“Shit.”

Finally, Daisy straightened. She was still breathing a little heavily, but had gathered herself enough to focus. She held out Jemma’s crushed protein bar, still in its silver package.

“You dropped this,” she offered. “Are you okay? I mean… three miles. So, no.”

“Is Fitz okay?” 

“You didn’t get him. It was just those little firestarter cubes and some alien bamboo type stuff, so it didn’t travel well. He’s back at camp, if you can call it that. He’s fine. Having an aneurism, figuratively, but physically he’s fine. What the hell happened back there?” 

“I don’t know,” Jemma confessed, and gestured helplessly at the endless blue around them. “This place, it makes me crazy. I woke up and forgot why I was here, I forgot all of you were here, I thought Fitz was – was a nightmare, trying to hurt me. There are things here Daisy…. Creatures…. Even I don’t fully understand what goes on here but the only thing you can do is run, so, that’s what I did.” 

“So I’ll tell everyone you’re alive then?” 

“Can’t. No cell service. Or radio waves of any kind.” 

“Right. Guess it’s a walk for us then.” 

“I guess so.”

In silence, the two of them headed back the way they had come. Jemma’s eyes dropped back to the dirt and she kicked a stray stone along. She was going back to the same place, physically as well as mentally now, and for a second she was so outraged at the whole situation that she kicked the stone so hard that it flew up a nearby hill. Fury burned through Jemma’s veins as she turned her thoughts on their careless captors. She didn’t even know what they wanted. They could have sent a probe to do this. The last team that had been sent here really had gone crazy and killed each other. At least the last people that had tortured her outright had had the gall to be properly sadistic about it. This was just pointless. 

Unless.

She stopped. 

Daisy stopped too, and frowned, but just as she was about to ask what was going on, Jemma surged after the stone to the top of the hill. 

(She followed it for the view. That horizon line. That shining star she realised, all of a sudden, that she recognised. It was the one that had led her to the No Fly Zone: to the skeleton and the husk of a society long since gone. She wondered if the monument Fitz had seen was near that place. She wondered if they would ever escape Hydra’s shadow. Maybe not. But maybe they could escape this place, and that was a start.)

Jemma turned her head to the sky again and this time, her face lit up: not quite with joy, but relief, and purpose. Recognition. Eagerly, she spun on her heel to face Daisy, and declared: 

“I know what they want.”


	2. A Man Called Alistair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: references to domestic violence & associated trauma (no depiction of violence or verbal/emotional abuse).

_Real_

  * _I wear ties & dress shoes on a regular basis_
  * _I built a potato clock for the 7 th grade science fair_
  * _I went to Shield Academy_



_Not Real_

  * _I like black coffee_
  * _I speak Latin_
  * _Aida went to Shield Academy_



_Real_

  * _I broke my arm in second grade_
  * _I broke my arm when I was six_



_I broke my arm. - ?_

Fitz blinked down at the words, puzzled. He read them over again, and frowned. Memories of two separate lives clamoured for his attention, and his head hurt. He pinched his nose. 

Jemma nudged him then, knocking him from his thoughts a little. 

“Are you okay?” she asked. It took everything in her not to look down at his page. These were his private thoughts – the path he had to walk to recovery inside his own mind – so she had to let him keep them to himself. But she couldn’t bare to let him walk alone.

“It’s dad,” Fitz explained, and sighed. “I keep getting stuck. I can’t figure out if he’s real or not real.” 

“Of course he’s real,” Jemma promised. “You still have a dad, even if he is…” 

“What?” 

Fitz’s tone was sharp all of a sudden; demanding. Jemma felt like swallowing her tongue. Fitz glared for a minute, but the satisfaction of the trap she’d walked into was soiled by its implications. What did being a dad really mean? he had intended to challenge her – but it was a cheap shot, because what did he know about it anyway? Fitz lowered his eyes apologetically and then, so did Jemma. She took his hand and began to play with his fingers, reassuring him with her touch despite the heavy conversation. 

“Fitz…” she began, “do you think – the things your father did to you in there, do you think some of it… might be real?” 

“I don’t know,” Fitz replied. “That’s what I was thinking about just now. Like… remember how I told you I broke my arm?”

“In second grade,” Jemma finished. 

“Yeah, but how? How’d I do it?”

Jemma blinked. Nothing came to mind, not even the slightest whisper of an idea. It was as if her memory had been wiped.

“I don’t – remember,” she confessed reluctantly. “Perhaps you fell? I’d guess always just assumed you’d got into trouble with some experiment or other and blown yourself up.” 

Fitz snorted. “Who in their right mind is going to give a six-year-old explosives?” 

“Well how did it happen then?” Jemma retorted. 

“That’s the thing,” Fitz agreed. “I don’t remember either. And then, with all this, it’s got me thinking that, you know, maybe…” 

He choked up, and his eyes were a little tearful when Jemma finally looked up into them. She tilted her head, flooded with pity. 

“Oh, Fitz.”

He took a deep breath, blinking the tears away, and offered her what smile he could. 

“I think it’s time for a visit home,” he said. “It’s the only way to get to the bottom of this.” 

“Okay,” Jemma agreed, and squeezed his hand for good measure. “I’ll do the leave slips tomorrow.” 

-

Once the decision was made, its morbid origins slipped to the sidelines as Fitz began to think about other things from home. He wondered what his old, miserable schoolyard would look like now; he recalled the computer store in town where he’d got his first job; he promised Jemma a bite of the best blueberry muffins in the world from the bakery around the corner from his house. He lamented the neighbours’ old dog, Fergus, who was long gone by now, and how it was a shame Hunter couldn’t come to watch the football with him. He longed for parts of his home life he could only remember in parts. Warmth. Patchwork quilts. The taste of mint leaf jube lollies.

“Did you ever have one of those tins?” Jemma wondered one evening. “You know, the biscuit tin that somehow never had any biscuits in it?”

“Yes!” Fitz cried. “Bloody sewing supplies. My Nan had one. Must be a nan thing. Honestly, I thought shortbread was a hoax for a while there.”

Jemma laughed, and hugged Fitz as she leaned in over his shoulder. He was sitting on the side of the bed, holding the picture of himself and his mother, out by the washing line of an old brick house, smiling. And this time, he was smiling too. Jemma kissed his cheek. 

“Do you have any photos of your Nan?”

“Not in here,” Fitz said. “But Mum’ll have loads. She probably still has all Nan’s photo albums. They had a great wedding, Nan and Grandpa Henry. At least, I think they did. If I remember right…” He frowned, deep in thought, and thumbed the edge of the photograph in his hand. “Hey, Jemma, are you allergic to horses?” 

Jemma frowned. “No, why?” 

“… No reason.” 

In Jemma’s opinion, she did quite a good job at hiding the extra distance her smile wanted to run in that moment. She had a flash of a vision of a fairytale wedding, being pulled up to the aisle in a magnificent carriage drawn by snow-white horses, in a ceremony drowned in grand romantic gestures. She would have gone with something a little smaller scale, but she was not going to begrudge Fitz arrangements of roses the likes of which their paychecks could never afford. Not in her fantasies, anyway. And especially not at a time like this, when Fitz was climbing out of a dark place by finding stable ground in his past, and already looking toward his future. Perhaps they were stronger than she’d thought. 

Well, she’d known deep down all along, really, that they were stronger than all of this, but fear and trauma did a lot to make one doubt that. Fitz recounting his true memories though, piece by piece as they came to him? Itchy suits at Sunday school. Hiding out in the top of the climber at recess. The first time his mother had given him that picture of space he loved so dearly. That never failed to make her feel better. 

And Fitz – well, Fitz surprised himself with how well he was feeling. He still had to manage his guilt and catastrophic thoughts, but looking back over his life – his real life – gave him a stability he had not quite realised he was missing. He had not often thought about why he was the way that he was, and this had not been the easiest of lessons, but differentiating between the real and the not-real forced him to reflect on his choices, on his feelings, on everything. From his love and respect for the wonderful women in his life, to his cherishing of small indulgences like food in a world that sometimes offered little else, his life rewrote itself down the tracks of his memories and he settled into the knowledge that this, truly, was who he was. Not that other man, whose life had been computer generated, but this one. This man, this life that he had built, and that had been shaped by the people that loved him at least as much as by those who didn’t. 

By the time Fitz set food on the plane home – an average passenger jet, for economy and appearances’ sake – he had an indescribable sense of ownership over his identity that even the thought of eight hours in a chair too small for his legs and a meal too small for his stomach could not quell. The feeling was not as ecstatically empowering as he’d hoped, as his life had not been full of as much sunshine and rainbows as he might have liked, but all through the flight, he scribbled real’s and not-real’s into his notebook with vigour. Occasionally, though pretending to read, Jemma snuck a glance in his direction, and smiled. 

(Only one question went left unanswered – almost forgotten – even as they took a cab to a hotel room and Fitz called his mother and she cried. So did he.) 

-

“You can come back in now,” Fitz invited. Jemma had made herself scarce for a while so that he and his mother could talk, but she had an insatiable curiosity which, when combined with her protectiveness, meant that she was never far away. In fact, it was only a few seconds after he’d called, that Jemma came back through the door to the bedroom and climbed over the covers to embrace him. Fitz had barely finished wiping his eyes, and he relished the comfort of her arms around him.

“How was it?” she asked. 

“I didn’t forget how to speak, at least,” Fitz evaluated. He sighed. “There’s just so much she doesn’t know. It’s so hard to talk to her… but I’m really glad I did. I am. She- she invited us over first thing tomorrow. Probably the only reason she didn’t insist we come over right away is so she can spend the whole bloody night cleaning.” 

Fitz laughed breathily and Jemma massaged some of the tension out of his shoulders. He hadn’t so much as spoken to his mother in years – after the Pod, there’d been too much to say and no way to say it, and everything had just snowballed since then. It felt like his whole life hung from a string that could snap at any second. He was getting used to feeling like this, but he wasn’t keen to drag his mother into the rollercoaster-like instability he seemed to attract. At least now he had Jemma, who was getting better at just listening, just trying to understand – not that he didn’t love how she was always willing to charge to the rescue; it was just that sometimes, all he needed was a hand to hold.

Jemma smiled. 

“That’s sweet,” she said. “We should bring something with us. Wine? Chocolates? Perhaps make some biscuits?” 

“Now?” Fitz raised an eyebrow at her. “You want to make biscuits _now?”_

“Well, why not? There’s a corner store just downstairs. It’s the polite thing to do.” 

So they made biscuits, and some of the sickening uncertainty was indeed driven back by obscene amounts of butter and sugar. The pair of them woke up the next morning in a floury heap, and scrambled to get ready. Today was the day – and it started well. Tears stayed behind their walls this time, albeit only barely. Praise was heaped on Jemma from both sides and Evelyn struggled to keep her hands off her son’s face; the face of a “proper young man” and “so grown up” and if the events that had forced him to grow up so fast and so hard had not been permanently engrained into his psyche he might have left them behind in favour of her contentedness and pride. Jemma stoked the fire too, giving his mother just enough heroic details and leaving out the more horrific parts – and of course promising that throughout their courtship, he had been a perfect gentleman. 

“Quite right, too,” Evelyn agreed, puffing her chest and jutting her chin out like… well, like a proud mother hen. Like the very spit of one, and not unlike her son showing off an achievement of his own. Fitz smirked to himself, and caught Jemma softly biting her own lip too, trying not to smile. It was all humour and innocence; glad they had come, with their difficulties merely shadows on the horizon. Of course, Evelyn caught the both of them grinning at what seemed to be nothing, and smiled devilishly too. 

“Don’t think your old ma can’t see you two lovebirds making eyes at each other,” she warned, and nodded at Jemma with a glint of mischief in her eye. “Not that it bothers me, mind – just see to it that he’s a gentleman in that area too, right?” 

“Jesus, Mum,” Fitz hissed, blushing. Jemma near cackled with laughter as he tried to cover his face with just one hand. 

“You have a lot to be proud of, is all I mean by it, Mrs Fitz,” Jemma clarified. Evelyn waved Jemma off with a sigh. 

“Truth is, the boy practically raised himself,” she confessed. “Couldn’t for the life of me get him to play with the other boys his age and his _mind_ – my goodness, I’m just thankful he’s finally found somebody who can keep up with him!”

Fitz smiled as Jemma modestly accepted the compliment. Usually, he’d take this opportunity to heap yet more praise upon her, but today, such a direct path to the topic of his upbringing could not be wasted. Or could it? 

“Speaking – speaking of that,” he began – and paused. Did he really need to know about _that_ after all? He’d been doing quite well these last few days, patching together more of his true past than he had anticipated. Maybe he could just let it go. Maybe it would be best not to know. 

But then Jemma shifted in her chair, her eyebrows furrowed a little in concern. She opened her mouth, prepared to speak for him if his words failed, and Fitz remembered with a sudden lurch of bitterness, all those horrible feelings. The inescapable fear of failure. The need to prove himself, so intense that he felt like committing violence when he stumbled over a sentence. How worthless he felt. And why. Why had he felt like that? Why so intense? 

“I – I was thinking I might get a peek at Fitz’s baby photos,” Jemma suggested, pulling Evelyn’s attention back to her with a winning smile while Fitz put his head in his hands, and pulled at his hair, in silent agony. 

“He’s only been able to show me a few,” Jemma continued good-naturedly, pretending she hadn’t noticed, “and I’d love to get a look at his mysterious childhood. So secretive that one.” 

“Oh, yes, he’s always been quite easily embarrassed, the poor dear,” Evelyn noted, smiling fondly as she obligingly dug out the requested album from under the coffee table. Jemma checked on Fitz while Evelyn was distracted, and nodded her head at the kitchen, suggesting he take a time out. Fitz all but fell over himself, feeling hot all of a sudden as he enthusiastically agreed. He stood, and tried to voice the word ‘tea?’ a few times, but in the end, just went for a fresh pot anyway. He needed the time and space to pull himself together.

In the kitchen, Fitz splashed his face with water, and stretched his neck. His thoughts were all in a knot by now and if he tried to go back into the other room, he’d just make an even worse knot of himself. Curse his tongue. And curse the crippling anxiety that tripled down on every stumbled sentence. Had it always had the voice of his father? 

While the kettle boiled, Fitz paced the kitchen, massaging his bad hand. Now that, he remembered. He took a deep breath. 

_Do it. I have to do it. Just do it. Or you never will._

But on the other hand; _What difference is it going to make? You are who you are because of whatever happened, or didn’t happen. Don’t bring the mood down. They’re having fun in there._

_But I wasn’t. Not in the Framework, not staring at that page, not thinking about kids with Jemma (kids with Jemma! How is that not fun?), not spending the evening at Nan’s on short notice because Dad was_

All of a sudden, Fitz felt very sick. All of a sudden, he remembered why the smell of mint leaf jube lollies had stuck in his mind – and why he hadn’t touched one in a good fifteen, twenty years. 

“Leo?” Evelyn leaned back to check on him through the kitchen doorway. Her eyeline was quite obstructed, but Fitz couldn’t form words fast enough to stop her getting up. “Are you alright in there, love? Tea’s just above the stove.” 

Jemma paused in her perusal of the photo album, and the smile slowly dropped from her face. It was too quiet. Then - 

“Right, Mum. Yeah,” came Fitz’s weak reply. It had been a while since the kettle had boiled, and it was a few seconds more before the half-hearted clinking of cutlery and crockery resumed. Then, a little stronger, Fitz added: “Hey, Mum, can I talk to you for two seconds?” 

Evelyn frowned back at Jemma, who almost leapt out of her seat despite knowing that she could not give Fitz the answers he was after. Instead, she dug her fingers into the photo album as subtly as she could and nodded for Evelyn to check on her son. Then, because it seemed proper, Evelyn gathered up their empty cups to be refilled and took them to the sink where Fitz was waiting, and grasping at the bench, trying to build up the courage. He rocked on his feet. 

“Hey- it’s- um,” he began, and then figured it was best to be out with it before his lungs exploded with anticipation and he blurted: “did Dad ever – hit – you?” 

Evelyn snorted, and the dishes clattered into the sink. “Don’t be silly, Leo, where did you get that idea from?” 

He couldn’t help but notice her blustering tone, overconfident, and the way that she avoided his eyes, looking out the window and down at the faucet and the teacups instead. Fitz bit his lip, suddenly feeling bad not only on his own behalf, but for what he’d brought up. But he’d started something now; in for a penny, in for a pound. 

“I’ve been thinking about my past a lot, is all,” he said, wanting to bite his tongue at his own necessary ambiguity. “Me and Jemma have… been through some things lately, that got me thinking. I – I remember some things, but not others, and I…” 

Fitz trailed off. His mother was shaking – with anger or fear or sorrow he couldn’t tell. Tears shone on her face. It no longer mattered why he’d asked. He had. And he had his answer, and even though he’d been expecting it, it still broke his heart.

“Mum?” he repeated, a little softer this time. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

His mother shook her head, and clenched a fist, but it didn’t do much good. She sighed, and confessed; 

“You were just a wee boy, Leo. You loved your da.” 

She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to quell the memories of helplessness and pain, anger and frustration, like she had a thousand times before, but when Fitz put a hand on her shoulder she couldn’t resist it anymore. She tried – of course she still tried – but what else could she do but cry, when her son wrapped his arms around her as if he could protect her from a danger nearly twenty years past? What else could she do, when the boy she had rescued, and loved, and broken over – more times than he would ever know - whispered his thanks in her ear? 

“Thank you.” He held her as tightly as if he could infuse his love into the very fibre of her being. “Thank you so much. For everything. It means – it means more to me than I can say. You _saved_ me, you know? You made me who I am. Don’t ever doubt that. I love you, Mum.”

He buried his face in her neck and she could tell, he was crying too, so Evelyn let go of the instinct to brush off her own pain. What good was it now anyway? It was not as if she could straighten their collars and walk back into the next room; if nothing else, the lovely Jemma girl was far too perceptive for that. And Fitz, poor dear Fitz, felt as tense as a bowstring. Evelyn stroked her fingers through his curls. 

“I love you too, Leo,” she assured him. “I love you too.”


End file.
